nail art,nail art gallery, nail art designs

Before we get into the fun stuff, the nails: the base on this is two coats of China Glaze Stone Cold, a graphite matte polish (did I realize it was matte when I pulled it off the shelf? Of course not, because I’m too lazy to check these things!) so before I went and screwed with it I got a picture in for posterity:

Afterwards I went in and painted in the MASH logo lettering, sealing it down with China Glaze Matte Magic (didn’t realize this got a little bumpy til after the photos, else I’d have buffed it down a bit… whoops).

“Ok great, you painted some letters on matte… why for weirdo?”

Well I’ll tell you friend! Last month I got to chatting with the MASH Nails folks after some online discussion about nail art and painting tools. I’m not being a brand suck-up: MASH brushes really are the ones I use all of the time. I’ve bought a handful of different sets of brushes over the past year (brown handles, clear handles, yellow handles, oh my!) but the only ones left in my working kit (if you’ve paid close attention to the few background shots on the site, you’ll have seen a Fossil box with a whole bouquet of upended brushes jutting out of it) are the MASH brushes. I like the weight and length, the bristles definitely seem to stay in place and play longer than others, and oh yeah, the metal tip doesn’t pop off of the handle like some cheapos I won’t name.

So as I’m gushing at Team MASH about their brushes I told them some of mine were on their last legs — and they offered to send me a new set! I’m super excited to break these open and start playing with them after today, have a look:

(MASH has also posted a blog entry over on their site that explains each of the different brushes/what you’d use them for if any of these look foreign to you.)

But wait, THERE’S MORE! Because Team MASH are so generous, they’re also going to let me give away more of their stuff TO YOU! Not only can you pick up a brush set as pictured above, but they’ll also be throwing in a set of their dotting tools and tweezers! Yes, I’m shouting, because it’s FREE and AWESOME!

Here’s the trick: just fill out this little Raffle Copter dealie below and you’ll be entered to win. I’ll be pulling the winner on April 23rd, so get your entries in by April 22nd (let’s just say 12pm EDT).

<a href=”http://rafl.es/enable-js”>You need javascript enabled to see this giveaway</a>.
(And yes, there will be someone verifying entries, so if you say you’ve followed and haven’t/didn’t, I’m gonna have to pull you out of the running… this isn’t to be jerky, and certainly most everybody isn’t looking to cheat the system, but there are definitely autobot raffle gamers out there that just want to win everything, and that’s not fair to everybody else I don’t think.)

Hope you guys are excited for this one — I definitely am. I get a lot of emails asking about what tools I use, and the brushes are the most important for my purposes. I will admit though that some of the more detailed stuff is done with a sort of Frankensteined MASH brush; nobody’s really selling one and two bristle nail art brushes (why would they? that’s kind of goofy)… so when I’ve completely beaten a brush down and the bristles are going every which way, I take that brush and will cut away all but a couple of hairs. That way a tired brush gets a new lease on life, and I get something other than a needle to use when I’m trying to make an insanely thin line with paint.

Good luck everybody, and thanks for playing! If you don’t want to leave it to chance, pop over to the MASH website where you can buy these tools (and a whole lot more) — they’ve got free standard shipping right now and everything.

Cool – thanks for the heads up about MASH. I’ve never heard of them before, but I haven’t gotten any brushes I’m super thrilled with, so I’ll have to check them out. (Just FYI the link for their youtube doesn’t work in the widget thingy, I don’t know if anyone else is having issues…)

You’re sweet, I’ll see what I can do about that…. I would send out Nail Nerd voodoo dolls but that might just be creepy. And I don’t want to be walking around my house with my hand plastered to my face because somebody sat on my doll or something.

They’re great! And this last set I think I bought last fall, so they’ve lasted this long/through however many manis have come and gone in the past two season — fabulous return on investment, especially when I think about the brushes I only used a couple of times and tossed because they were crap.

I just recently reaquired my “nail habit” and love this blog! It’s funny because I still kept my MASH brushes even though my other brushes were given away – so I definitely know what you mean about their quality.

Aw thank you! And yessss with the brushes — may they never ever go out of business (or at least not before I can buy a crate full to store out in the shed… sort of the nail addict equivalent of “in case of emergency, break glass”)

I know what you mean – my brushes are still in pretty good shape but definitely aren’t “new” any more so I had put another set in my Amazon wishlist a few weeks ago. I was going to wait until the giveaway was over to see if I won, but I keep thinking “it would be nice to have a backup set….” LOL.

Have you tried their stamping plates yet? I really haven’t dug into any of their stuff outside of the brushes and was surprised to see they had so much going on when I actually visited the site (had previously been buying the brushes off of Amazon)…

Haha it’s a time investment for sure, but actually really fun so totally worth it! I wish I had more free time lately, I really miss getting lost in all the great nail blogs for hours on end — it’s amazing what people can create and invent, and super humbling (I’ve seen some stuff out there that I’m pretty sure I’ll never be able to do….)

but if you don’t want to buy another piece of nail art gear, than you can just use nail polish remover/artificial nail remover. Just make sure that you let them soak for a little (not to long though, you don’t want to damage the brushes) and rub them over something to get all the polish out from the middle.

I am starting to get into detailing (need much practice) and have a few mix match brushes. I have the basic stripers, short detailer, and I do believe my cat took off with best brush for cleanup. I am drooling right now!

i’m SO excited you’re doing a giveaway! and i just so happen to need some nail brushes! the ones i’m using now are cheapies from the craft store and while they get the job done (most of the time), they definitely leave something to be desired.

I know I fell off the internet for a few days so here’s a blanket fingers crossed: GOOD LUCK EVERYBODY! They’re great brushes so even if you don’t win it’s definitely worth picking up a set — I’m one of those nerds that will find something I like and stick with it til they stop making it (dang you, lemon flavored gum!), so here’s to hoping MASH stays around for a long, long time.

Aw shucks, thank you! We rep NOLA pretty hard around here. The background photo is from one of the cemeteries down the road too — was walking the little dog past it about a year ago when they were filming some scenes for Treme so snapped a few pictures of Rebirth Brass Band playing down the aisles.

Thanks to everyone that entered, y’all are the best! Nicole won this round, but there are always more promos in the works — even found some extra duplicate polishes while going through my collection this weekend, so those will go into the giveaway pile — stay tuned!

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